


Centuries

by thornfield_girl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Holding Hands, M/M, The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 18:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19910299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thornfield_girl/pseuds/thornfield_girl
Summary: There’s a question Crowley’s been holding onto for around fifty years or so, and he figures a walk after the world didn’t end is as good a time as any to ask.





	Centuries

Soho, London  
1967

_You go too fast for me, Crowley._

Just what the heaven was that supposed to mean? Crowley turned the corner, tires screeching, his hands gripping the wheel as if he were holding onto the edge of the earth, and missed clipping the corner of a pram by the width of an angel’s hair. Aziraphale should have known by then that he was always in control of his vehicle. And he should damned well know—or by God know—whatever—that Crowley would never harm an innocent. Not directly, and certainly not frivolously. 

Or...did he know that? He’d insinuated the opposite more than enough times, but after all these years Crowley took it as no more than a joke. ‘Get thee behind me, foul fiend,’ et cetera. Because honestly, what kind of an angel would befriend someone like that? 

Well, a shit one, obviously. Which, to be fair… But still, while Azirophale was clearly a sub par and conflicted angel, he was still a good person. The best person, really. Crowley’s favorite person by a mile, but then, perhaps the opinion of a demon wasn’t the best measure. 

_You go too fast._

Perhaps in an effort to dispute that accusation, Crowley let it lie. He left his questions unasked and unanswered for decades, and was prepared to wait longer. What did time mean to two immortals locked in an eternal stalemate of their own making? It meant nothing, until it meant _everything._

Mayfair, London  
2019

Lunch after the Near Miss was a haze for Crowley. Aziraphale chatted on between bites of all his favorite foods, and Crowley was content to smile at him, to listen, to interject at appropriate intervals, and to drink. But mostly, what he did was stare at him from behind his dark glasses. He was behaving the same as always in almost every sense, but there was an opening up in his affect, a loss of tension, an expansiveness Crowley had never seen before in his manner. It was fascinating, really. There had always been glimpses of this side of his angel, but it had always been tempered by fear, or by duty, or guilt, or some such thing. He would always rein it in before long lest it get beyond his control, even when they were spectacularly drunk. Now, there were ever so slightly bawdy jokes. There was open mouthed laughter at Crowley’s spot on impression of Shadwell, complete with raised finger. The lunch lasted hours, but felt like minutes. 

“Well,” Azirophale said as they exited the Ritz, “that was lovely.” He unnecessarily straightened his immaculate waistcoat and glanced at Crowley. All his effusiveness seemed to have vanished, and he seemed unsure. 

“It was glorious, angel.” 

“You barely ate anything.” When Crowley only shrugged in response, Aziraphale took a decisive breath and went on. “I suppose I ought to go and open the shop, then.” 

“Might be better to leave it closed the rest of the day. Nothing like odd, unposted hours to drive off customers, eh?” 

Aziraphale shrugged. “What would I do instead?” 

“I thought perhaps a walk?” 

“Oh!” He glanced nervously at Crowley, but smiled gamely just the same. “A constitutional. Excellent idea. Lead the way.” 

They fell into step with each other, strides matching up as if they’d been marching together for years. They hadn’t, of course. They’d each been on their own path--Aziraphale on the straight one, at least in relative terms, and Crowley on his intricately twisted one, which crossed the other at various points--until they finally converged. They’d ended up in the same place in the end. It made one wonder about the nature of morality, and at some time in the future might bear thinking about, but this was not that time. 

Crowley calmly reached down and took Aziraphale’s hand. This prompted a startled look, but he didn’t pull away. In fact, after a moment, he gave a slight squeeze as if to assure him this was fine. 

“Not too fast for you, then, angel?” 

“Too fast?” Azirophale tittered. “You’ve waited six thousand years to hold my hand. It’s surely the longest first date in history.” 

Crowley grinned. “Do you remember saying that to me? After the holy water? You wouldn’t let me drive you home.” 

“You were a menace. Then as now.” Aziraphale sighed. “But of course I wasn’t afraid to ride with you. Not really. I was afraid to _be_ with you. Or rather, I was afraid of how much I wanted to be with you. I was afraid of what it said about me, as an angel, that I craved your company so. That I couldn’t see the evil in you that I was expected to see. That I thought, more often than not, what you were saying was...well...right.”

“I thought you were just afraid of getting caught.” 

“That was certainly factored in,” Azirophale said, casting a sideways glance at him. “I worried. All the time. I was cheating. We were cheating. We’ve spent most of our time on earth living like the most privileged of humans, and hardly doing our jobs _at all._ ” When Crowley opened his mouth to protest, Aziraphale cut him off. “Yes, yes, I know. The M25. Good work. But still, my dear, in the grand scheme of things…” 

Crowley snorted. “Think, angel. God knows everything, doesn’t She?”

Affronted, Aziraphale said, “Of course She does.” 

“Do you really think She relies on a bureaucracy of arsehole Archangels to keep an eye on her first Principality on earth? Is there--and be honest---any way She didn’t know about us all along?” 

Aziraphale stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk, causing a woman to run her pram into the backs of his heels. “Sorry,” he mumbled, as she glared at him and rushed past. He stared at Crowley, mouth flapping until he finally managed a strangled, “Fuck.” 

Crowley offered a smirk that somehow managed to be both affectionate and mocking. “That’s roughly what I said when it occurred to me, as well. Only I said it several more times, quite a bit louder, and in Aramaic.” He tugged at Aziraphale’s hand to get him moving again, but it didn’t work. He refused to budge. 

“When?” 

“Ah.” Crowley ran his free hand through his hair and looked away. “That would have been...oh, around two millenia ago.” 

Aziraphale frowned and pulled his hand away. “I beg your pardon. Two _thousand_ years ago? And it never crossed your mind to share this little epiphany?” 

“I thought it would make you freak out even more. The idea that She was watching you always? That She could see everything we did? I was afraid it would push you away completely. I couldn’t… I just couldn’t, all right? And frankly, I assumed the idea might pop into your head at some point. It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it?” 

“Well, it is _now._ ” 

People muttered under their breath as they navigated around the two eccentric looking gentlemen standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at each other intensely. Crowley, scowling, waved his hand, and instead of passive aggressive irritation, the pedestrians smiled pleasantly as they navigated around the spectacle. 

“Do you want to know how I figured it out?” 

Aziraphale nodded brusquely. “Go on. What happened two thousand years ago that--oh.” His face began to dawn with comprehension.

Crowley nodded. “We were stood there, you and I, watching that kind carpenter slash rabbi get fucking nails driven into his fucking hands and feet. Stood there next to each other as a good man died of thirst and shock in the desert sun, all because She thought it was the best way to teach people a lesson. And do you remember what She was trying to teach them? Now, I realize this is a simplification, angel, but essentially, She wanted people to understand what was _right_ and what was _wrong._ Really came around on that one, She did. Bit late. And people assume it was _my_ lot that invented irony.” 

Aziraphale ignored--or possibly didn’t even register--the blasphemy. “She would have been watching. Of course She would. How could She not?” Aziraphale looked a bit wobbly and even paler than usual. “She never cared. We’ve been safe this whole time.” 

“ _You’ve_ been safe this whole time. She’s not the boss of me, remember?”

“You took all those chances, believing I was in the clear but you weren’t? You took more chances than I ever would have dreamed of on my own. What were you thinking?” 

“Angel,” Crowley said, much more gently than usual, “I’m a demon. Cut off from Her love. My life held very little value to me. Yours, on the other hand, yours had infinite value. To me and to Her and to humanity.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes widened, and his mouth thinned into a small, straight line. He seemed to have recovered most of his wits, and began stalking up the street. Crowley followed after a moment, wondering what he’d said that could have been so offensive. They’d gone almost two blocks before Aziraphale spoke, and when he did, it was in a voice shaking with anger and disbelief.

“Did it never occur to you that your life had value _to me_? Did you not stop and think, just once, what this life would be like for me without you here?” His voice continued to rise in indignation. “What if they’d replaced you with one of the actual baddies? What if they’d sent Hastur?” Aziraphale shuddered. 

Crowley sneered. “Surely not. He’s far too stupid.” 

“Oh, stop! Stop being charming. Stop making jokes. For God’s sake, Crowley. I’ve loved you for centuries, and all this time you’ve been putting yourself at risk, and letting me think I’ve been making the same theoretical sacrifice, when in fact you’ve taken it all on yourself. It’s horrific.” 

“I may have made a miscalculation, in any case. They did try to burn you with hellfire up there. Gabriel is not a fan.” 

Aziraphale gave a dramatic eye roll. “So, your premise is that God knows everything, but somehow it escaped Her notice that we switched bodies, and in fact an actual demon was allowed to enter heaven? Do you think you would have made it past the front lobby if She hadn’t made it happen? You should have been ejected before you got through the door.” 

“You’re saying…” 

Aziraphale pursed his lips and cast his eyes to the side. “I’m not saying anything. It’s beyond me. It’s--” 

“Ineffable.” 

“Quite.” 

They walked on in silence for a few minutes longer, but no longer at the same angry pace. Aziraphale reached for Crowley’s hand this time, and Crowley squeezed back. 

“So it’s centuries, is it?” 

“At a minimum,” Aziraphale said, still slightly grumpy. “The time you saved me from the guillotine and we had crepes after--that’s when I knew. I imagine it started well before that, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. You?” 

“Technically, I haven’t said I love you at all.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve known you loved me since that business with the Nazis.” 

“Ah.” Crowley snapped the fingers of his free hand. “The books. I knew it was too much.” 

“It was a comfort to me, to know you felt that way. I knew--or I thought, anyway--that we would never be able to acknowledge it, but I was glad just the same. It made me feel less lonely here. In point of fact, I don’t think I’ve truly felt lonely since that night.” 

Crowley stared at him for a few moments, grateful—not for the first time—for his dark glasses. It was all well and good for an angel to wear his feelings so plainly on his face, but another altogether for a demon to be caught welling up with emotion. “I don’t know how long, angel. I only know it feels like always. Like forever.” 

It should have been humiliating, Crowley supposed, to say something so naked. But once it was out of his mouth, Aziraphale’s face lit up like heaven’s corner office, his lovely blue eyes all crinkly and perhaps a bit damp, and Crowley felt only an amazing warmth throughout his whole body. It may have been only a shadow of what he’d once felt, before the Fall, but to be honest he couldn’t actually remember that very clearly. This was enough, more than enough. More than he’d ever expected to feel again. 

Crowley pulled Aziraphale into a nearby bus shelter, staring down the middle-aged American couple who were already sitting inside until they cleared out. “Listen, I don’t know what this--us--means to you. I have no idea what form this kind of love takes for an angel, or for a demon, for that matter. Whatever you want, I want. Just be with me from now on. Yes? Okay?” 

“You are dearest of my heart, you old serpent.” Aziraphale reached both hands up and cupped Crowley’s face. He kissed him so softly on the lips, and it felt like a cloud just before a summer thunderstorm. “You wicked tempter, son of perdition.” He kissed him again. “You angel of God, fallen from heaven,” he whispered. “Only, you didn’t fall nearly as far as you once thought, did you?” 

“Sauntered,” Crowley rasped. 

“Of course, dear.” Aziraphale kissed him a third time, really just a peck. “Now, let’s get out of here and let these nice tourists have a seat, shall we? Is the Bentley nearby? I feel like a drive.”


End file.
